


Giving Dust For Gold

by QuickYoke



Series: Cloisonné [1]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Werewolf!Danny is a sidenote
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-23 10:34:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2544374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuickYoke/pseuds/QuickYoke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carmilla deals with hunger pangs and also what to get Laura for her birthday. Part 1 of Cloisonné</p>
            </blockquote>





	Giving Dust For Gold

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to tumblr, then I remembered I had an ao3 account. Whoop.

* * *

 

_“_ _Who doth the swaying scales of battle hold,_  
 _War’s money-changer, giving dust for gold,_  
 _Sends back, to hearts that held them dear,_  
 _Scant ash of warriors, wept with many a tear,_  
 _Light to the band, but heavy to the soul;_  
 _Yea, fills the light urn full_  
 _With what survived the flame-_  
 _Death’s dusty measure of a hero’s frame!”_

_—Aeschylus, ‘Agamemnon’_

* * *

 

The small fridge opened and closed with a rocking sway and a muted slap. Carmilla sighed, then opened the refrigerator once more. She leaned on its door, feet crossed at the ankles. The tiny fridge groaned at her, but she ignored it. She was supposed to be considering her choice of beverages, but instead she mulled over the upcoming party, her eyes darkening.

There was no avoiding it. Where could she flee? Her room and the adjacent hallways would be swarming with people like bees in their streaked boudoirs. Danny would hear none of Laura’s protests, and insisted on a gathering for her birthday; and when the Zetas unearthed that the Summer Society was involved – well. An otherwise lacklustre occasion grew into its own sour decay. 

In comparison to the grand events she had attended throughout her years, Carmilla was sure – and more than sure – that this would be the kind of affair over which Tolstoyan protagonists would bemoan their ennui. No radiant tablecloths, nor many-antlered candelabras. No thick silken gowns, nor gem-encrusted masks. A pretenseless charade. How dull. Parties should be singular and glittering. They should be veiled. They should allow her to wade through like a sylph, unseen, drenched in a hazy canopy of light, and then to corner an unsuspecting hart and ply their tongue with honeyed wine. The thrill floating in those mellow moments by the vacant dripping candles, and each step was another dish in the course. Parties should be a fine and varied palate, but most of all parties should be savoured.

Pretty chocolates and cakes she relished, but she could not abide this pomp, the gather and display of fools for an hour that rightly belonged to someone else. Time passed and celebrations grew even more stale and over-ripe upon the vine. Now they were shrivelled, purple and black, passed over by the meanest crow. They lacked taste. They palled. Carmilla had no appetite for such things these days.

The cold from the fridge was starting to permeate her legs. With a huff, Carmilla grabbed a can and shut the refrigerator door. She rolled the cool aluminium in her palms, musing.

Ages ago she would have brought a gift for the hostess – something equally alluring and expensive: a small blue glass of myrrh, or a diadem of Libyan gold, red as ochre. But Carmilla did not know what flavour of gift Laura would want, if any. The batwing bracelet had been outlandish and disdained. She was sure outright ostentation would be similarly received.

Quite unlike herself. Upon her Turning Carmilla had taken to hoarding. She would pass vendors in the streets and her fingertips itched. Within three years she had stolen away a king’s ransom in gold and precious jewels. The metal entranced her most, flushed as it was with a warm lustre like the swollen blush beneath a virgin’s cheeks. She had often wondered – would she bleed gold like ichor, sticky and rich? Or perhaps whole like pale coins? She had even seriously considered swallowing scavenged dross, or slitting herself open from sternum to navel, the trenchant blade slicing deep, and stuffing the empty cavity there with her ever-growing trove. Instead she had lined her pockets and the seams of her voluminous clothes until she clattered when she walked.

She had once hazarded to ask “the dean” about gold. In reply she had received an answer about some half-baked theory concerning gold’s ‘vital preservational properties’ and ‘werewolves’ and also something snapped waspishly about, “If you’re caught stealing from the crown, I’m not paying your bail. You can rot in prison without hands, for all I care.” Carmilla sneered at the memory.

Yet the words had rung true whenever she had encountered a werewolf, though she never would have dreamed of finding one in her room. She had not so much as smelled it as she had tasted it. She had walked into the room, and there Laura and Danny had sat, and the air was laden with a tang. It percolated somewhere in the back of her mouth, numbing yet sharp, like cloves. A sneer had stolen across her face before she could contain it. Danny’s eyes had widened, then narrowed upon the gold chain at Carmilla’s throat, the solid bangles at her wrists. Of course Laura adored the mutt. Typical. When she had gagged at their sappy antics, she’d only been half joking; that taste grew thick as mulch with every passing moment Danny remained – soaked through with damp like an old forest floor. She had sprawled across her bed and chewed on the gold chain until Danny left in the hopes of ridding her mouth of that taste.

The obsession with gold had never truly waned, only – like blood-lust – grown more contained. She could feed her hunger into a shrinking box until she deemed it prudent to uncage. Though sometimes it paced, straining at the bars of its confinement like a living thing, the only thing yet living within her – a sleuth-hound gaunt, eager, and well-trained. It had been happening more frequently of late, this appanage of glut increasingly difficult to maintain. When she found herself surrounded by a cluster of people. When Laura breathed, quiet, solitary, and undisturbed through the night. When Laura’s pulse quickened in nightmarish throes, the steady bruit of her heart a cacophony like a blood-dimmed tide. When Laura –

– There. A snap as of brittle branches, followed by a sibilant hiss. Carmilla looked down to see the unopened beverage ruptured in her trembling fist. Carbonated fluids boiled across her wrist, and pooled on the floor. With a string of muttered curses, she threw what remained of the can into the trash, then snatched Laura’s towel from where it hung on the back of the bathroom door to clean up the mess.

This was how it always began, slow and creeping as a subterranean vine. Hunger tempered with selfishness into a cruel and ardent ingot. One by one she stacked the memory of past meals away with a metallic click, and the cage grew smaller. In so many ways Laura reminded her of all the others – young, dedicated, idealistic – so temptingly pliant. Yet at the same time not at all. Something intractable lived in her, tough, green, and inchoate. It wound its whispering scales round her like a vein of ore. In the hands of someone more experienced it could be heated and beaten into an aegis, but for now it remained raw, pure, and firmly entrenched.

Draping the wet towel over the foot of Laura’s duvet, Carmilla knelt down beside her own bed. From beneath it she dragged a heavy canvas bag. Her fingers shook as she untied the drawstrings, and eventually ripped it open to reveal a royal haul. She poured over her fortune and let our a long ragged sigh. Slowly she lowered her hands, plunging them deep until piles of lambent coins and medallions winking with cut rubies tumbled away from the skin above her elbows. The cloying hoard did not actually slake any thirsts, but made it easier to abstain.

Her head cleared, famine fading like a mist or vapour. Carmilla blinked down at the gold puddled around her arms. Perhaps there was something singular and glittering she could give Laura after all. With a smirk she leaned back and poured over her wares.

This brooch was too ornate. That set of earrings was missing one of its diamonds. That – how did  _that_  end up in there? She tossed the dry and age-darkened knuckle bone under Laura’s bed. Here she happened upon an old onyx cameo wreathed in aureate rope. There an elaborate ring that linked to a matching bracelet. Too obvious? She set it aside regardless. She never had been very subtle anyway. Better to give gifts than snatch Laura away from the coils of mortality whenever the urge overcame her. Too frequent and too exigent for comfort.

Her head perked up. Distinct footsteps down the hall, their tread a narrow patter like the nervous scurry and scrape of a sparrow through thorny branches. Carmilla stuffed a few items into her pockets, sweeping the rest back into the bag and stuffing it out of sight. When Laura entered the room it was to find it empty but for the faint smell of dark mephitic smoke.

Later the next day, Carmilla lounged upon her bed with the best air of languor she could muster, watching. Tonight was the night. The sounds of preparation festered in the distance – Danny, LaFontaine, and Perry were off managing food and decorations. Carmilla peered, never-blinking, over the top of her book at Laura as she rattled on to her computer’s camera. Every so often Laura would cast a glare in her direction, flashing quick as bronze, to which Carmilla responded by feigning indifference and toying with a corner of the yellow pillow propped beneath her. Laura’s mouth twisted into a sour pout, but she merely huffed and continued talking to her camera. It remained a game, this item to be swapped and shared between them like a shared platter.

At last Laura rose, finished, and made her way to the door, only to have Carmilla block her path.

“Um…Excuse me?” Laura tried edging around, but Carmilla stepped smoothly in the way once more, trapping her between their beds.

“I have something for you,” she announced, and held out a small black velvet box.

Laura frowned at first, then tentatively reached out to take the proffered gift, “Thanks,” she said slowly, careful to not actually touch Carmilla’s hands.

When she opened the box, she blinked, her lips forming a small ‘o’ of surprise. She must have been expecting another batwing, or perhaps a skinned dormouse. Delicately she lifted a fine gold chain threading together two pierced antique coins. The imagery embedded in the metal was all but faded – the head of some king or late emperor – but the gold still shone liquid bright and pure.

“Is this,” Laura’s eyes widened, “solid gold?”

“It’s only plated,” Carmilla lied.

Laura looked at her like she didn’t believe her. The coins captured the light and winked, “Let me guess,” Laura drawled, twirling the coins between her hands, “It’s a charm.”

“Of a sort,” Carmilla tilted her head, “It will grant you safe passage.”

“To where?  _Through_ where?”

Carmilla just smiled, “Wherever you like. Here, let me,” she took the gift. Rather than order Laura to turn around, Carmilla took her by the shoulders and did so herself. It felt like an excuse to touch, though she refused to let herself think that. Still, she gently pushed aside the long russet wave of Laura’s hair and reached around to fasten the chain. The breath stuttered in her chest as her fingers brushed against the sun-warmed skin of the nape of Laura’s neck. Here was the devil’s table arrayed with bloodied delicacies. How easy it would be to just –

Carmilla cleared her throat and stepped away, “There. Now,” she turned and flung herself back onto her bed, snatching up her book and hiding behind it, “go to your party. Try not to die from boredom.”

“Thank you,” Laura replied, slow and unsure, fingering the coins strung around her rosy neck. She made as if to leave, but faltered at the door, “You know you’re invited, right?”

“And why on earth would I want to stomach such an insipid event?” Carmilla growled.

“No reason. Your book’s upside down, by the way.”

With a snarl, Carmilla hurled said book in Laura’s direction, but it only thunked uselessly against the closet. Laura shook her head and grinned, “And your aim is off today. Something on your mind?”

“No. And for the last time I’m not going to your dumb party.”

“Suit yourself.”  


End file.
